


twice upon a time

by propergoffic



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bonding, Dancing, Other, Team Talon (Overwatch), fluff?, idk is "talon fluff" the hill on which i wish to die? the rock on which i shall build my church?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 18:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20296318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propergoffic/pseuds/propergoffic
Summary: Talon's living weapons find some common ground.





	twice upon a time

The Widowmaker did not sleep. She waited. Occasionally, her consciousness lapsed, her awareness fading, but something in her was always attuned, sensitive to changes in the environment, subtle cues, compromised positions. It had its disadvantages (she was always tired) and its advantages (Amélie, at least, slept).

It did mean that, right here and now, when there were other people in the Widow’s nest, she was a little too alert. On edge. Not irritated, of course; nothing irritated her. But she was conscious, and she was conscious of the fact that she was conscious, when she would rather not be.

She slipped out of bed, dressed as quietly as she could — if there was a legitimate threat, she didn’t want to meet it in her dressing gown — and made her way through the silent halls.

The disturbance, she discovered, was in the library. More specifically; the disturbance was floating a good metre off the ground, and half her library was either open on the desk, on the floor, or in mid-air around the hovering figure. She watched, silent as only she could be, as volumes were set down and taken up by invisible hands, bobbing into the air, pages turned with a musician’s delicacy.

She wasn’t hiding, but she would have been quite content to watch. Subject Sigma, she had been told, was a dangerous man. Not out of malice, or even active inclination; but his unique and destructive capabilities were on a hair trigger, and she’d been warned about his hypersensitivity, his lack of emotional resilience. It didn’t take a genius to imagine what he could do if startled; it was better, all around, if she allowed herself to be discovered.

“Quite the collection,” he said, unselfconscious, when he finally turned in a direction that let him see her, and then “I’m sorry. I tried to be quiet.”

“You were.” The Widowmaker stepped straight over the railing, dropping eight feet onto the ground. “An unaugmented human would never have noticed you.”

Sigma hummed — a little longer than usual for a gentle sound of consent — then seemed to jolt himself back into the ordinary world of colleagues and conversations. “Yes. I suppose not. I’ll put them back, of course.” His hands waved airily, and five books bobbed and weaved in the night air.

“Take your time. They were my grandfather’s. I bought the collection back when I had the chance, of course; it’s more or less complete. But I never read them.”

“And yet, to pursue your particular duties, in your particular style…” Sigma paused, as if tasting the words before he said them aloud. “You have an instinct for practical physics.”

It sounded like a compliment, and so she took it as such, inclining her head with rehearsed politeness.

“And I believe you danced, once upon a time.”

What came out was a sniff, and another. A tremble of the throat and a tic of the face. Someone deep inside her was laughing; the laughter was bitter, near-hysterical, wryly charmed. Probabilities would collapse, as probabilities did, but all probabilities faltered in the face of psychic entropy, the dead weight of her conditioning pressing down. She felt nothing. She was nothing. And this haughty little flicker of emotion was all that made it through.

“Once upon a time,” she said, deadpan. His features curved and cracked; inquisitive, delighted, surprised, slightly hurt, the tremor of disparate sensation running through him, lines of fracture shaking. The fingers of his right hand flexed; once, twice; something at the back of his head awoke, adjusted, manipulated; all was still again, the centre holding its disparate facets in place a while longer. His left hand span its dance in the air, and the books closed themselves, settling on the desk.

When he held out both his hands, she took them; his eyes closed, and his mind opened to the song. It sang through him; saturated him; and with a minute twitch they were in motion, a poor imitation of the music of the spheres thrumming in his throat.

Leaving the ground startled her, momentarily, but the Widowmaker had been well made. Surprise was natural. Reaction was controlled, tamped down, like everything else. This was merely a complication. A situation unfolding, to be adapted to. She hesitated, but only for a beat, and leaned in, guiding him back, letting him lead himself, turning a slow valse-musette in the air.

“Maybe twice,” she said, as they descended. Her feet touched the floor. His did not.

“I won’t tell them.” Subject Sigma’s face twitched again, a smile faltering as though surprised to find itself there.

The Widowmaker nodded, again; one living weapon to another. 

As secrets went, it was harmless enough.


End file.
